RE: Kids w/ Classic Autism, PDD-NOS & Speech Delays

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Our newest issue is our son developed seemingly overnight an irrational fear of public rest rooms. This has always been a problematic area but he at least would go in them before, he always loved checking out the bathrooms in every store we went. Now, even if he really has to go he'll still demand to see the bathroom but won't even go in, he does the potty dance right outside the bathroom. Doesn't make a difference if the bathroom is quiet and unoccupied. He makes a big scene outside the door, runs around with no regard to where other shoppers are going, doesn't care if he crashes into people, tries to sit on the floor etc. We wind up cutting all our shopping trips with him off early because we have to take him home to use the bathroom. If I put a container in the car for him to go in in emergencies he'd probably be happy with that and expect to do that all the time in addition to touring bathrooms but I'd really rather he just use the bathroom.

No bad incident that we're aware of, someone may have let him use a regular bathroom at school and he could be having an over reaction to hand dryers. The bathroom we tried to take him into last night had the quietest hand dryer in it I'd ever heard, but he didn't care. My son hates getting water on his head, he's terrified of the shower - I've never been able to get him in one. That's crazy with the deodorant.

Had a rotten incident at a McDonald's playground today. Our son went out to play and there were already a bunch of kids playing on the equipment and one Dad was out there watching the kids. Our son tried to introduce himself to one of the boys and repeatedly got called "stupid-head" in return my son argues back "I'm not a stupid-head", we wait for the other Dad to step in as this goes back and forth. Then our son challenges the bigger boy with "I'm gonna kill you!" ... great. So we pull our son out and start lecturing that as mean as the first boy was what our son just said was much worse, then a little girl comes out upset because a boy hit her, turns out only the little girl belonged to the other Dad and none of the other kids were being looked after. Another Dad comes out, claims another little girl. We all decided to just leave though I think the first Dad went in to confront the unattended boys parents. We took our son to another playground and warned him not to keep repeating what the bully at McDonald's had said. So of course he kept mimicking the other boy and saying "stupid-head". After the second time I warned him if he said it once more he'd go home. He couldn't help himself and said it a third time and went home in tears. Worse than "stupid-head" is how on earth am I going to stop him from responding to a bully with "I'm going to kill you"? We had a problem with him saying it before, he doesn't really comprehend what he's saying and he just liked getting a reaction out of us. It took a lot of redirection to get him to stop, it's obviously still in his arsenal though of things to say to get a reaction out of someone. I thought maybe imaginative play with stuffed animals on how to react to a bully might be a good idea but I'm afraid he'd have more fun emulating whatever I decide to have the "bully" stuffed animal do.

My son played with the neighbor's kids today and didn't say anything negative. It wasn't until we went to his Grandmother's later in the afternoon that he brought it up again, but it was in story context because he was trying to tell her what happened yesterday which I think is a good thing.

We were there again today and the playground was over run with kids and of course no other adults but us were out there watching them. I was pretty worried when our son ran out there because he said something along the lines of "and no saying stupid-head" ... but that was the end of it, he didn't say it after that and was just stating that he knew he wasn't allowed to say it. All the kids were nice today and there were no problems.

Christmas didn't go too well...we went to my parents' house, my son just ran around the house all day, opened maybe 2 presents (this is better than last year when he opened zero) ate next to nothing, then when we got home he went straight to bed and cried nonstop for two hours.

Sorry to hear that. Ours went pretty well, if anything I had the opposite problem where my son was expecting a constant flow of presents from people, but not too bad. My Mom was the petty and irrational one this year ... I love my Mom dearly and almost never butt-heads with her but ... yikes. I'll stop here before I go off on a tangent. Let's just say I'm awfully insensitive to her because I let my son see his Grandfather for a couple hours on Christmas.

I remember crying for hours at a time when I was little. If he's anything like I was it could be some little thing that got to him. I remember feeling absolutely horrible and crying because I was supposed to spend a few nights at my Aunt's house when I was around 5 years old and my aunt and cousins bought me some kind of little girl lipstick and insisted on putting it on me. I wasn't allowed to wear make up at home (5 years old after all) I didn't want it on and I thought my Mom would be heart broken if she found out I'd let them put it on. I cried and cried until they gave in and let me go home, I felt like they'd made me betray her.

My new conundrum is halfway a good thing ... there's a family down the street from me with a boy who's only a few months older than my son. I suspect he's ADHD or possibly HFA himself but mainstreamed, I'm not going to ask. There's 4 young kids in the family and none of the other kids on the street play with them and they welcome my son over. I let him play with them today and the issue is there is so much dog poo in the back yard (only one dog) that it's impossible not to accidentally step in it. They also invited him inside which I was hesitant to OK because he's allergic to cats and they have one. He didn't have an allergic reaction while he was there, but their home smelled like a litter box. My son even said "what's that smell?" when he walked in, one of the other kids blamed it on the dog farting. I'm sure they're so used to it they don't smell it. They were also looking after another boy who had visited for the holiday (a nephew I think - about 10, I guess) who had classic autism ... so apparently autism runs in their family which may be why my son is comfortable there. I suppose the obvious answer is to have their kids at my house, I don't have a back yard though and I have the social skills of a barnacle.